Harvard graduate reaches Google after visa deadline

Abhijay Vuyyuru, a San Francisco-based product manager at Google, says his path to Big Tech took years of work across Europe, an MBA at Harvard Business School, a post-graduation job search during a tough market, and a 90-day visa clock—before a series of inte

Abhijay Vuyyuru remembers graduating from Harvard in May 2024 with no full-time job lined up—and the timing felt unforgiving. He was still targeting product manager roles. but openings looked scarce. applications weren’t gaining traction. and an entirely different deadline was already moving in the background.

As an international student, he had 90 days after graduating to find work or leave the country. “The internship bought me time,” he said of a decision he made earlier, when he took a product management internship at a private equity firm even though he hadn’t yet found his next full-time step.

Vuyyuru’s journey reads like a long hiring funnel—one he tried to steer with strategy. patience. and increasingly direct outreach—rather than a clean line from a Harvard diploma to a Big Tech offer. He graduated with a Harvard degree in 2024, started at Google in November 2024, and lives in San Francisco. He is in his early 30s.

His story begins in 2017, when he earned his bachelor’s degree in India. He then worked in data science and product manager roles in Europe until 2022, when he moved to the US to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School.

By the time he enrolled at Harvard in 2022, he had a goal that never changed: work in Big Tech. In his Harvard application. he said he wanted to work at a Big Tech company like Apple or Google—and he eventually did both. Still, he describes the path to those companies as anything but straightforward.

In the US, he says the job search was built around networking, not campus-style recruiting. He started actively looking for roles late, waiting until December to pursue a summer internship while at Harvard. He applied widely, but he was “mostly getting automated rejections.”

Eventually, he realized the system rewarded getting in front of the right person. In his new approach, he identified hiring managers on LinkedIn and reached out directly. Out of 100 messages, he said maybe eight people replied, and one might become a real lead.

That method paid off once he messaged a hiring manager at Apple. That LinkedIn message led to a response, and it helped his Apple application “get a closer look.” In May 2023, he started a three-month product manager internship at Apple. He was excited—then hit another familiar barrier.

After his internship ended, he wanted to work at Apple full-time after graduation. But he was told there was no head count available on his team. He was advised to stay in touch if circumstances changed. but he assumed it wouldn’t happen “anytime soon.” So he moved back into active full-time searching.

The graduation month arrived—May 2024—and he says the market felt extremely challenging. He struggled to gain traction applying for the product manager roles he was targeting, and he felt the contrast with his classmates, who appeared to have jobs already lined up.

In January of his final semester, he tried a different route. He started an unpaid externship at a venture capital firm, hoping it could help him land a full-time position. He said he felt he did well and that the company liked him, but he didn’t get an offer.

While the search continued, he also had practical pressures tightening around him. He had taken out a big loan for graduate school, and his family was coming to the US to celebrate his graduation. “It was a weird feeling not to have a job lined up at that point,” he said.

At the same time. he was securing a kind of runway: he had a three-month product management internship at a private equity firm. He didn’t realize at the time that the internship would change everything. For him, the most immediate impact was visa timing. The internship came after graduation was approaching, and because he was an international student, the 90-day clock mattered. With the internship in place, he didn’t have to spend every day watching that deadline run down.

In his telling, the internship didn’t just pause the urgency. It also created US work experience he could point to while looking for other roles.

Even then, he says he wasn’t fully done pursuing Big Tech. He felt he had applied to every Big Tech role he could without breaking through, and he still believed there might be a way to make it happen.

That belief sharpened after a friend from Harvard who had previously worked at Google shared information in a group chat. The friend had a former manager hiring for a product manager role within Google’s YouTube division. Vuyyuru told the group he was interested. and his friend said they put in a good word with the hiring manager.

The process moved through five rounds of interviews. He landed the role and started at Google in November 2024—six months after graduating from Harvard.

At Google now, he calls the job a “dream role.” He says he’s able to work on products that impact millions of people, and he frames the timing as energizing because the company is investing heavily in AI.

He also rejects a critique he has heard from others: that Google’s scale turns employees into “cogs in the wheel.” As a product manager, he says he is expected to own entire business areas and take a holistic view of tech solutions—an approach he argues is far from interchangeable.

The job hunt and the company’s AI momentum have also influenced how he shares his experience. He says he now gives advice on Instagram. LinkedIn. and YouTube. where he has built an audience of more than 750. 000 followers across platforms. He hasn’t made money from the posts, but he says the biggest benefit is helping others. At the same time, he notes that building an online following can increase visibility and lead to new professional opportunities.

His advice for a job search today is shaped by automation. If he were searching now. he says he would use automation tools like n8n to track job postings and automate parts of outreach—identifying hiring managers and drafting personalized messages. He said he used to write dozens of messages a day on LinkedIn. but much of that work can now be automated.

He also describes what he sees in his circles: people who once only shared promotions on LinkedIn now post more regularly. One reason, he says, is that it has become easier to create content, partly because AI tools reduce friction. He also points to a kind of social pressure—FOMO—where friends’ posting makes others feel they can’t fall behind.

Between May 2024 and November 2024. Vuyyuru’s story turned on a few hard realities: a crowded application flow. the importance of reaching the right person. the uncertainty of headcount availability. and a visa deadline that doesn’t pause just because someone is still trying to land the role they want. For him. the internship didn’t just provide experience—it stopped the clock long enough to keep pushing toward Big Tech.

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